Saturday, November 21, 2015

The highlight of October. Patti Smith, 69 years, on the replay of "Horses", he first album recorded in 1975.

Since 1974, when she founded her band, the guitarist, bassist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye.

Patti Smith was a fusion of poetry and music, the origin of the punk movement and, with her book 'just kids'of her time with Robert Mapplethorpe, also a prize winning writer.

On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of Radio Ethiopia, her second album Patti Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida, and fell 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several neck vertebrae. The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy,
during which time she was able to reassess, re-energize and reorganize
her life. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end
of the 1970s.

Even with that, and now being 69, she is still full of energy, and a clearly outspoken message.

oday she tours with her son Jackson, of her marriage with Fred Sonic Smith

Other band members today are Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Tony Shanahan on Bass.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Nowadays every town has to have its festival. The little dump where i live does not want to be an exception. So every year they scratch the money together they can get and organise the Strandwalfestival.

Of course there has to be live music and a couple of bands. One of the stages is in a quite nice location in a clearing in a park. And sometimes they get a real star. This year it was Candy Dulfer, saxophonist and the daughter of.....

And she is great, versatile, and, forever young. And since 35 years accompanied by guitarist Ulco Bed.

If you look at her tour schedule with concerts all over the world it really is a miracle that she would play before a couple of hunderd people in our park

Candy, influenced by her father, started to play saxophone when she was six years old. And of course she played her first success, ""lily was here", the sound track to the film "De Kassiere", which she played with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. She also played with people like Maceo Parker, Blondie, Van Morrison and even Pink Floyd

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The master of the blues gituar, Robert Cray, played full house in the paard last month.

Crays band consists of Richard Cousins plazing the bass, Dover Weinber on keybords and Les Falconer on drums.

And of course he plyed his most famous song, strong persuader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r46VfVUNUCI

Completely different stuff was going on Rotterdam. The North Sea Jazz festival is coming up and the town needs full two weeks to warm up.

On saturday was the official contest for the european jazz competition. The competition was won by Flash Pig, but my favorite was the open source trio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3eNVtmDLaw&list=PLNjvztdPahEjbNaxYv-s0To7hEWkXOOo6&index=2

And this was the last act of the evening, Sarah Jane

The paard is closed in June and July. But the month starts with the Parade festival, which has a good selection of music. And there is still Amsterdam and Rotterdam....

Saturday, May 23, 2015

In her home country switzerland she is a star playing to big crowds, in Rotterdam's you hear her standing on the stage in front of you - a stage so small, that the keyboard player has to use your shoulder to climb around his equipment to reach his spot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVr90f343GE

Her broad repertoire from ballads to experimental, almost punk like rock, sometimes everything in one song, maybe as a consequence to her father, who liked to listen to jazz and punk and her first experiences as a singer in the indie rock band Fisher.

Her songs are poetry in english as well as German, french and switzer dutch... no dutch. Young as she seems to be.... she not only is an
excellent musician and song writer, but she also writes essays for such
outstanding papers as the german weekly die zeit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyUp1rnv7rY

Songs which send the shivers down your back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mUIDQQHE2A

We are getting closer to the vacation period. There is less going in june and there might be even less in july and august:

Again, there are some really famous guys coming up, like Jessy J in the Paradiso and Franz Ferdinand in Melkweg, but unfortunately they are already sold out. So think of the concert of KOVACS, the dutch answer to amy whinehouse, on sunday 4.10. will be one of the highlights of the season and sell out quickly

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Last month Mike enthusiastically came back from Amsterdam where he had listened to the gang of 4. Myself, instead I listened to my own gang of three.

I went to Vienna to visit a friend and by chance stumbled into a bar right next to Prinz Eugen's fantastic castle and garden, the belvedere, and right around the corner from where I stayed.. It turned out, the place called Lousiana, is one of the best venues for blues in vienna with live music from wednesday to saturday. And that although it holds at the most 30 people. It turned out one of the women who run it comes from close to where i come from and she took care right away to get me a pleasant spot at the bar.

That night the mudcats were playing. Guitarist Herby Dunkel, drummer Didi Mattersberger and Benji Hösel playing bass guitar did a great show until long after midnight. The atmosphere was not only blue.... it was like being transferred back into the time of endless revolutions in vienna between 1918 and 1938 which is so well described in stephan zweig's famous autobiography "die welt von gestern" (the world of yesterday)

When I came back next night, the owner had already reserved one of the precious spots at the bar for us. Guitarist Erik Trauner was giving a one man show, that is, the crowd shouted a theme, and he played a suitable song. We did not get home much earlier that night.... It's definitely a place to go back when I return to Vienna next time.

And here the owner and her teckel, who had to have a look from time to time....

But here is what is going on in our favourite spots in May:

Paard

07.05.
kleine zaal HERITAGE BLUES ORCHESTRA
whining guitars, styleful old men, if you like real blues… this might be a
photographers dream too

10.05 grote
zaal ALPHA BLONDY & THE SOLAR SYSTEM we had him before, but he does not
like photographers…. http://findmypicture.blogspot.nl/2009_11_01_archive.html

15.05 grote zaal GOTCHA!
Hard rock from Haarlem

23.05
kleine zaal PORTICO electronic synth pop

29.-31.5.
the SNIESTER pop rock festival, Mike would probably like SUE THE NIGHT on
friday

31.05
kleine zaal OTIS READING no, not the one of …. (who died age 26) but his son
who has soul as well

Paradiso

08. Bassekou
Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba (Mali) who according to the paradise plays the traditional
be instrument with the dynamics of Jimi Hendrix

12.05 MACEO
PARKER a frequent guest in our area

20.05 DELTA RAE American rock and folk

22.05 NOURA
MINT SEYMALI blues form Mauretania

23.05 ZANE
CARNEY songwriter guitarist

25.05 ERIC
BURDON the legendary….

29.05 JESSE
MALIN punk

30.05 THE
REPLACEMENTS influential indie rockband from the 80ties

Melkweg

10.05 MARINA
AND THE DIAMONDS…. Unfortunately sold out

22.05 DANKO
JONES Canadian rock

26.05 SOL Y
LLUVIA well known in Chile since 1978

28.05 HANS
DULFER see him before it is too late….

Rotown

07.05 AND SO
I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR post rock from belfast

09.05
SOPHIE HUNGER the famous swiss singer in a concert in ROTOWN!!!!

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

We all regretted that Mike stopped with the monthly account of the "Music in his mind". We urged him to continue, but to no avail. But we are all eager to go to more concerts. So I decided to start a similar blog of my own - in the hope, of course, to sometimes drag Mike out of his hole, because this never can be a replacement for what he did.

I hope this will be on a regular, maybe monthly basis, but don't expect too much. A start is made.

Sleater Kinney is an all girls rockband from Portland, Oregon. After 9 years they reunited and we went to their show in the great Paradiso in Amsterdam.

The band, Corin Tucker (vocals and guitar), Carrie Brownstein (guitar and vocals), and Janet Weiss (drums) can be considered as part of the west coast riot girl and indie rock scene. They are known for their feminist and left leaning attitude.

They were praised the best rock band in 2001 and greatest living rock band in 2015, and really, they know how to scream in high pitch. Anyway, i forgot to take ear plugs and i really was afraid that my right ear, turned to the speakers, had taken irreversible dammage since it was numb and ringing for two days....

Then on saturday, the 28th, quite the opposite. Blues rock from the east coast, JJ Grey&Mofro and Marc Broussard in the Paard. It was their last concert of the latest European tour and JJ repeatedly announced his intention that he would play until drunk enough to have to stop.

So we were treated with 3 and a half hours of Blues and Jazz Rock at its finest. With musicians great enough that they were actually able to present themselves playing several solos each during the evening. This is something i increasingly miss with a lot of the late contemporary bands.... they play well as a group, but none of them dares to stand out.

We don't think JJ really stopped because he couldn't stand on his feet any more, but we hope that he enjoyed his plastic cups of beer well enough to come back.

So what is going on next month? I have listened through the video clips on the agenda's of a couple of venues and this is what i found interesting. If you have more suggestions, please leave a comment: